March 25, 2007

less brain fuzz, more cherry blossoms

Happy Naw-Ruz everybody! (That's the Baha'i new year.) Actually, it was March 21st, but I've been out of town visiting mama and Layli and so I'm saying it now. I just think the first day of spring is such a great time to have a new year. The world around me really looks like it's starting fresh. My friend Janie planned the community's Naw-Ruz party and asked me to come help since her theme was 'Japanese springtime'. We had so much fun. She made our planning group all write poems in haiku form about spiritual springtime using bits from the Writings and it was so fun because they're so short that you can just whip them out. Here's one I wrote that sums up how I'm feeling coming out of the winter fuzzy-head into the focus of spring:

I'm "awakened by Thy breeze",
look around with brand new eyes,
see we're all still here.

March 20, 2007

remix and match

We've been playing a lot with YouTube lately. Here's something Billy made and a few things we've found.

1. Folding laundry

Billy took time lapse pictures one minute apart of the laundry folding process at our house. What he doesn't show is the actual washing and drying and lugging baskets up and down treacherous stairways, which are all things that he does. So I get all the glory with my folding and putting away. Not fair. But he's a selfless sort.

2. Greg Padillo

The title of this one is "Beatboxing flute inspector gadget remix" It's got over 3 million views so you've probably already seen it, but in case you haven't: enjoy. If you look for him on YouTube he also does the themes to Sesame Street and mario brothers, among others. Billy found this and we are all very impressed with his mad styles.

3. Spaceghost2k

A very strange and hilarious juxtaposition of Hello Kitty clips and the theme to Mortal Kombat. This makes us laugh and if we knew anything about the video game I'm sure it would make us laugh even more.

March 14, 2007

eco-warriors

This week my Netflix movie was "An Inconvenient Truth" and Billy's was "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind". After watching them both, I realized what a perfect complement they were to each other. If you haven't seen Al Gore as the ultimate classic hero, spreading the message of personal responsibility for stopping global warming, I highly recommend the experience. Actually, I think I'm the last person I know who hasn't seen it, so..uh..I finally caught up to ya'll. Watching Nausicaa (I know, I thought that was a very unfortunate name too, but I've abandoned my name prejudice since seeing her in action) right afterwards was so perfect for me, who likes the storytelling better than the slide show exposition. The backstory of this excellent Studio Ghibli anime is similar to our near-future-if-global-warming-continues-scenario plus some mile-high fire warriors that destroy all the cities and kill most of the people. So then Nausicaa is this brave, smart, glider-flying princess that learns the secret to living in harmony with the toxic jungles and their enormous insects that are killing what people are left on earth. The strategies that win the day in both of these movies are personal sacrifice for the greater good and living in harmony with the natural world instead of fighting and destroying it. I can get with that. The best part for me was hearing about what our environmental problems are and some examples of how to solve them from Al Gore, and then seeing a movie where someone actually solves a problem facing her people with her own actions. Very inspiring.

March 09, 2007

promised pictures

Here's me trying to get the girls to do yoga at Teresa's birthday cake eating party so they would stop leap frogging off the walls in their excitement to get a piece of this:

which they had previously decorated with little candies Teresa had picked out.

She's such an interesting person. She does this little thing with her hands where she puts all her fingers together like this and does different poses. Here she was sort of giving her piece of cake a hug or maybe trying to figure out how to pick it all up at once. So cute! It was a very small party, by the way. She wanted it quiet, I think, and didn't want me to invite anyone that doesn't already live here at the Bakery (as Khalil calls our house). So we ate our little cake, opened a couple presents, and got to bed on time. She's such a moderate person. Ahhh, delightful.

So, let's see...snow fort. More of a tunnel, really. Billy took some sweet pictures of the kids in it.
First, each kid got their own snow hole.

Here's Devyn in his.

Then they connected two of the holes. Billy said the snow was packed and wet, so it was pretty hard to move.

Apparently they persevered and got it done.

Georgia told me later that that was a perfect day.

Here's the deer herd I post about periodically. I saw 14 of them, hanging out and eating breakfast.

March 04, 2007

10 second update

Well, let's see. Billy just left for a week-long business trip to San Francisco, it's Day 3 of the Baha'i Fast (my first one in seven years because I've been pregnant or nursing since then), Teresa turned 2 a couple weeks ago- both in age and decidedness, Billy and David made a tunnel through a snow bank for the kids to play in which made me think of ice hotels and we looked at pictures of them on the internet- so amazing! Pictures......ah..to come.